For election fights, it's gavel to gavel coverage

Pennsylvania's voter ID case is one of several playing out in courtrooms across U.S.

August 07, 2012|By John L. Micek, Call Harrisburg Bureau

HARRISBURG — — If you thought Pennsylvania was the only place you could catch some good election-related courtroom drama this year, think again.

From Ohio to Colorado, legal fights over who can vote and the circumstances under which their ballots can be counted are spooling out in state and federal courtrooms. And observers say they're a sign of the increased blending of litigation and politics.

In the post-Bush v. Gore era, "it's probably not surprising and perhaps inevitable that … so many matters become the province of the courts," said Chris Borick, a political science professor and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown. "The idea that we can use the legal system to [political] advantage is very much part of our contemporary environment."

That idea has been amplified by the increasingly partisan tenor of the times and increasingly tight margins in some elections, Wilkes University political science professor Thomas Baldino said.

"There's so much at stake that if you can't win at the ballot box, you go to court," he said.

In Colorado, lawyers are challenging the secretary of state's proposed purge of non-citizens from the state's voter rolls. In Florida, lawsuits are challenging a variety of voting-law changes, including a similar purge of non-citizens from the rolls.

And in Ohio, President Barack Obama's re-election campaign is suing over a Republican-authored law that would shorten the Buckeye State's early voting period, the Washington Post reported Monday.

That these arguments are largely unfolding in a quartet of presidential battlegrounds should not come as a surprise.

The new paradigm was on display in a state courtroom last week as oral arguments wrapped up in Pennsylvania's nationally watched voter ID case. Foes of the law hope to prevent it from being used during November's general election.

They argue that the Republican-passed law (which requires people to show photo identification to vote) could disenfranchise voters, with a disproportionate impact on the poor, the aged and minorities who have historically voted Democrat. The foes also want the law declared unconstitutional and stricken from the books.

Lawyers for the state argued before Commonwealth Court Judge Robert E. Simpson that similar statutes in other states have not resulted in voter disenfranchisement, and that officials are making strenuous efforts to educate the public about the law's requirements.

In Wisconsin, two judges kept that state's voter ID law from taking effect. The U.S. Justice Department also kept a Texas law from taking effect, finding it would unfairly impact Hispanic voters who are less likely to have proper identification.

But in Missouri, a judge struck down that state's stricter voter ID law. The state now has a weaker requirement allowing people to vote if they have a driver's license or some form of non-photo identification, such as a utility bill.

Simpson, a Republican, is expected to make his ruling next week, though he has acknowledged that it is a dress rehearsal for an inevitable appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Bruce Ledewitz, who teaches state constitutional law at the Duquesne University law school in Pittsburgh, said he believes the plaintiffs have a high bar to reach to prove their case.

In court, opponents argued that the law was unnecessary but, as Ledewitz pointed out, "a law doesn't have to be unnecessary for it to be unconstitutional."

If the plaintiffs were able to prove that the law was specifically intended to suppress the vote among a certain segment of the population, "it is illegal," he said. "But I could not tell from afar if there was enough evidence to make that finding."